Indeed, at least eight new bars and restaurants have popped up on the Brooklyn boulevard in the last two years alone.

Wait, don't they know the area's blighted? Vanderbilt Avenue is the eastern border of the Atlantic Yards footprint.

“It’s starting to gel in a very exciting way,” says Ellen Fishman, who’s lived in Prospect Heights for a dozen years and co-owns longtime Vanderbilt restaurants Aliseo Osteria and Amorina with her husband, Albano Ballerini.

“It’s urban, obviously, and yet it’s so amazingly small-town at the same time,” she says of the ’hood. “It’s like the Village of 30 years ago."